


D.S. al Coda

by Kestrel337



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, Pre-S1, Remix, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 08:30:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1811959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kestrel337/pseuds/Kestrel337
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock was never silent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	D.S. al Coda

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unovis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unovis/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Shirt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/577778) by [Unovis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unovis/pseuds/Unovis). 



> Thank you to Unovis for the wonderful story The Shirt. 
> 
> Written for the Sherlock Remix community on LiveJournal.
> 
> As ever, I own nobody and nothing and make no money. 
> 
> All praises to LonghornLetters for her invaluable beta work, and to SmallHobbit for britpicking. Remaining errors are mine and mine alone.

Sherlock Holmes was never silent around people. He didn’t censor or edit his words for smart people, stupid people, for classmates or colleagues. Observations and judgments were given in the same rapid-fire voice, point connecting to point in an unbroken line. No icy glances or insincere smiles, no need to guess at what unspoken expectation had been disappointed because there were none left unsaid. People always knew where they stood with him, always knew where to attempt improvement. He wished they would.

When he moved away from home, the silence came with him. It filled his flat with the encounters of the day; curled lips and wrinkled noses, sneers and leers and dead-eyed grins. He drove it away fortissimo, presto con brio. When that failed, the pizzicato needle, piercing the silence of his veins. Andante. Allegro. Crescendo. Glissando.

He stumbled into the perfect job, seeking out a dealer who’d been caught undercutting the established rate. A flurry of notes, of clues screaming a story the police couldn’t hear. Imbeciles all, except one, a tall man with silver hair, desperately covering a drunken slur. But he listened, lips rounding in surprise at the deductions that poured from Sherlock’s mouth. Very similar, Sherlock learned, to the face he made when his orgasm spilled across a flickering tongue. _Oh, my god. I didn’t expect that_ , he’d said, and passed out still half-dressed. Sherlock had borrowed his toothbrush, and spent the rest of the week trying to replicate the single crystalline sound of Greg Lestrade’s post-orgasm sigh. Such a soft sound, echoing through the hallways and antechambers of his mind-palace, silent approbation fleeing before whispered appreciation.

Other officers labeled him “freak” and “weirdo”, whispers behind his back and silent disapproval in his face, but Lestrade listened, and smiled, and fell to pieces under his touch. The drugs eventually betrayed him to a hospital room and more of Mycroft’s frowns. He’d almost made the silence permanent, and that would never do. No more drugs, then. His own voice in a new flat (Mycroft said the skull was macabre, as if that wasn’t the point), the violin, and Greg Lestrade. Sherlock pushed, and pressed, and crowded, resenting the man’s voice even as he craved it, layered it over cold looks and pinched mouths and hush, hush, don’t say such things.

Two years on he’d kicked the drugs but couldn’t beat the silver haired cop in the working man’s white shirts. White shirts, white noise, a background drone underscoring sforzando sex. Tea and toast, the lack of conversation less silence, more caesura.

The third summer brought a blanket of oppressive heat and loss of power, sticky and smelly and heavy. The flat, the neighborhood, the world,everything was still and mute and lethal. He fled, a wounded beast seeking its den, equilibrium found in a pounding shower and whirring fan. The endless heat wave interlude, rolling timpani, wanted and wanting. He built a concert hall in his mind palace that summer, tore it down, built a jazz cafe. The memories fit more easily there, smoky, sultry, shadows and light. Kisses, and silk, and ice rattling in an empty glass.

Four years. Lestrade started wearing checked shirts, perpendicular lines framing empty spaces. Amplitude and wavelength, the limits of sound and silence, woven together. Reliable and comfortable.

The case was a dull one, domestic, plebeian. Lestrade, standing pale over the bodies of a mother and son. Root and third. Predictable, neither attractive nor ugly. Beads of sweat dampening silvered hair. A clenched jaw and hollow eyes looking over tell-tale spatters, taking in nothing. Ah, boyfriend. Cop. Firearms officer gone wrong. Diminished fifth. The Devil’s Interval. Vigilante justice from a man sworn and armed to uphold the law. Sherlock saw it, he spoke it. Suspension, awaiting the resolution of praise that never came. A roar, a shout, his head slammed against the wall and rigid fingers squeezing, clenching, crushing his voice and breath. Black spots swirling, screeching in his ears, and then nothing. Segno.

The next time Sherlock saw him, Lestrade was quiet, wary, chin tilted high and body utterly still. Sherlock gave his observations, piano con sordino, signed off on his paperwork, and went home.

Lestrade wore a checked shirt. Black lines. Empty spaces. Staves of silence.


End file.
